Thursday, June 23, 2005

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.-Psalm 126:1-2

I never realized that to dream is itself a privilege. I had always been discontent until the fulfilment of dreams. Here the psalmist equates the feeling of restoration to that of one who dreams. Previously he must have felt no hope, no ability to even dream of restoration and victory, and now the mere freedom to dream was to him as exhilarating as their realization is to me.

Perhaps I have much to learn from him. So often I view life as "a means to an end," the attainment of career goals or the completion of projects. Maybe the mere freedom to dream should be enough. I have dreamt so much and so long over the years, but always anxious and impatient to realize them or hopeless that they would ever come to pass. Now is the time to bask in the dreams themselves, the opportunity to surpass all barriers for the moment in anticipation of what might come. And therein lies the key. These dreams can provide joy now because I have faith that God can turn them into reality later. The details may change, but God faithfully remains forever the same:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think...to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-1)

Notable Quotable

"This club with a shortage of ego and an excess of character ascended to baseball's throne in the way it preferred, with a collaborative performance." (Chris Haft, on the San Francisco Giants' 2012 World Series victory)

"In a society that craves results now, in a world that demands excellence every day, head coaches rarely are allowed the time they need to grow into the job and master it. Reminders of it come every year at this time. Head coaches are fired, head coaches are hired and the coaching carousel spins without producing in the ways NFL owners had hoped." (Adam Shefter, on the "coaching carousel" of rapid coaching firing/hiring after the season)

"A perennial danger among contemporary students of the New Testament is to overlook the two-thousand-year history of debate and interpretation generated by these twenty-seven books. The pressure to be up-to-date with the voluminous contemporary literature, combined with the penchant endemic to twenty-first-century Western culture to revere the innovative, even the faddish, and be suspicious of the traditional, conspires to blind us to our connections with twenty centuries of Christian readers." (Carson DA & Moo DJ, An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 31)